SparkDad

There is one thing that is for sure, Stickman and Porkchop love Asian style dumplings. For the past six month I have, off and on, looked for wonton wrappers so that I could make some at home. Finally yesterday I found them at Wal-Mart. So I embarked on my first dumpling recipe.

I had 2 pounds of pork in the freezer so I decided to make pork dumplings.  ( This was WAY TOO MUCH! It mad almost 100 dumplings )

I used the recipe at http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Chinese-Dumplings and the recipe was pretty good, although is called for sesame oil in the ingredient list but never used it in the recipe : ( I used their triple boil method for cooking the dumplings which worked very well.

A couple of tips:

- Do not over pack the dumpling wrappers because they will bust open.

- Do not under pack the dumpling wrappers because they will bust open

I know! Confusing! You need just the right amount in there or they will be saggy or they will pop open! It just takes practice! We will be having these very often because the boys love them!

Lastly my new BBQ pit is wonderful but it is also stressful! It is very nice and I want to take good care of it so we bought a cover for it. Now this cover was a cheap one for sure but it protects it from the weather. The only problem with this cheap cover is that it keeps blowing off! In addition it is a light plastic and when we returned the holiday I noticed that it had become brittle and has a foot long tear in it, which is probably a result of it continuously blowing off.

So I set out to find a nice grill cover. I searched and found many sources for the covers but this one stood out.  It seems that the best ones have a heavy grade polyester on the outside and a plastic or PVC lining. They also have velcro adjustment straps instead of those cheap drawstrings. They are higher than I paid for my $14.99 plastic grill cover, but my $300 grill is worth it!  They even had a smaller one there in the same design for a smaller BBQ pit or kettle style pit.

I really like the chili pepper design so Mama if you are reading this post you can add this to my wish list.

- Spark Dad

Once again a hiatus. I have not posted since October 25th. During October I was organizing a Cub Scout camp for 300 kids. The last 30 days of that planning was taxing to say the least.  After the camp I did not want to do much of anything including blogging.

I took two months off and got my head back together. Now I am ready with a new plan getting ready for the new year, a renewed sense of urgency in my work and a lack of wardrobe!

We are getting ready for our annual Holiday trips and as I was looking at my clothes today to pack I realized that I was in bad shape on some things. I have a lot of old clothes. So I logged on to Macys.com to take a look around. Of course if you will notice in the above screen clip there is a category missing! We live in the Houston area where the temperatures support shorts most of the year. No shorts on the menu above!

I did find some shirts on the site that were a good value and are a good fit for my casual wardrobe.

The shirts I found can be found here.

I picked out some colors that work with my jeans. Yes, as a stay at home dad I wear jeans or shorts 99% of the time! These shirts look great with button down collars, meaning no collar stays, and they are wash and wear. I hate to iron : )

Also I found this Macy’s promo code at Savings.com! This site seemed to be a good place to get coupons. Mama and I always search for coupons before buying online and we use Savings.com often. Feel free to use it!

So like a good man, I did not dilly dally at the store, albeit a virtual one. I went, I bought and now I am doing something else.

My wife would have been at the site for an hour, but that is another post!

Merry Christmas to all! I will let you know if there are up to snuff in 5-7 days when they arrive!

- Spark Dad

The first Friday that the Camaro arrived, Mama and I met our neighbors at a Mid-Town Houston restaurant for dinner. 

All of my life I have only owned two new cars. And these new cars were not top of the line models like this one, so never has anyone offered to do anything special for my car.

When we arrived at the restaurant we drove around looking for parking but were unsuccessful so we decided to go ahead and valet the car.

When we pulled up to the valet stand and the valet approached the car. He took a good look at the car.

“Hello Sir. How are you this evening?”, said the Valet.

“Fine.", I said.

“Would you like to have the car parked out front?”, the Valet motioned to a parking spot in front of the restaurant.

Let me tell you that Mama and I were caught off guard. The Valets like to park the expensive, nice cars out front to help the establishments image.

I do not get that in my Nissan Pathfinder : )

All I can say is the Camaro is fantastic, affordable luxury. American muscle. I love it!

- Spark Dad

- Spark Dad

This year had to have been one of the worst years for Super Bowl commercials. I did however see a commercial for Vacation Rental.org

that sparked my interest. They had a very funny vacation rental commercial.

This site is a travel site that focuses on staying at vacation homes instead of at a hotel when on a trip. This is a great idea and concept. They are very hard to find because there is no unified way to search them, but there are some phenomenal values in the industry, especially if you are going with a large group.

We used a vacation rental on our last summer vacation to Lake Medina, Texas. It was the second year that we rented the same home. The cost was about $1500 for a week and the home slept $10 so for about $150 per person for the week we had a lake front property!

I think that the next time that Mama and I do a weekend getaway we may check into using Vacation Rental.org

See you soon! – Spark Dad